Autumn has a way of making us reflect on summer.
A long spell of sunshine might be welcome on the beach, but its real effect on the land becomes clearer as the dry days start to stack up. After this year’s long summer months, the effect has been much more noticeable. Small crops, earlier picking, empty water stores or in some cases, even a surprisingly good year for some crops (British wines being one!).
Summer 2026 was a rather hot summer. The average temperature reached 16.6C, with England, Wales and Northern Ireland all breaking their previous summer records. By mid August, 71% of England was officially in drought.*
For growers, that meant another season of difficult decisions. What gets watered? What can survive without it? Is there enough grazing for animals? Should something be harvested early, or left in the hope the rain will eventually arrive?
Now the season is turning, we are beginning to see some of the answers.
Obviously there is no single story of the year’s harvest, just like there is no single story of the rainfall on this island we call home. Most of England has had limited rain, but North West Scotland has had more than ever.
Some crops and farms have coped better than others. Soil types, water availability, crop varieties and local weather systems can all make a considerable difference.
Some figures from the Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board collected up to the 24th August, showed that UK wheat yields are around 12% below the five year average. Just as spring barley is down 19% and oats are down 17%.
But again, that’s not the whole picture, oilseed rape is performing above average campored to previous years. **
That variation matters massively. It prevents us from reducing the season to a simple tale of everything failing. We all know farming has always involved levels of uncertainty, and a field in Cornwall may have experienced a very different summer to one in Perthshire.
The painful factor behind those percentages are growers also dealing with smaller harvests, rising costs, and now another year of unreliable growing patterns.
Supermarkets are very good at hiding a difficult growing year.
Produce continues to appear regardless, often looking much the same as it did the year before. Imports, storage, contracts and global supply networks are helping keep food available when harvests struggle in local areas.
That resilience is valuable, food security does not mean producing absolutely everything within our own borders, and international trade is not automatically a bad thing.
Bul full shelves can disguise what is happening further in the system.
The UK currently imports around 80% of its fruit and 47% of its vegetables. Many of the countries supplying that food are also increasingly exposed to extreme heat and lack of water. The Food Foundation has warned that replying heavily on climate vulnerable supply chains creates a risk to our food security. ***
This does not mean that the country is about to run out of food this winter, much to the claims of some newspaper headlines. It does mean that we should ask whether the system can be called secure if the people growing the food, here and elsewhere, are expected to absorb increasingly crazy seasons while keeping prices low and shelves full.
Food security generally asks whether people have reliable access to enough nutritious food.
There is another related idea… Food Sovereignty. Put simply, this asks who has control over the system, how food is produced and whether growers and communities have a meaningful say in it. ****
It is not just about growing more food in the UK (although that is a great prospect to strive for) or about replacing every import with a British equivalent. It is about creating a system in which people can access good food, the growers can make a viable living, and the decisions are not made solely according to the demands of the largest supermarket chains.
Where possible buying direct from a farmer, joining a veg-box scheme, or getting involved with a community agriculture project can make a genuine difference. These localised ideas help share some of the risks and rewards of the growing season. *****
But unfortunately local food is not always affordable or accessible. Not everyone has the money to completely change where they shop. Not everyone has space to grow food, access to local farms, or even free time to spend preseving 100 jars of beetroot.
There are still practical ways to build a closer relationship with the food system:
- Buy direct from the grower or farm when you can.
- Find veg-box schemes or community supported growing schemes nearby.
- Try to eat more seasonally, and expect availability the change throughout the year.
- Accept the wonky vegetables!
- Learn how to store, share or preserve food.
- Take an interest in the pressures growers are facing, rather than noticing only when the prices increase again.
And probably more importantly, we can learn what food production really involves.
I would be a miss if I didn’t mention WWOOF here…
If everyone took a week off and went WWOOFing, it would not solve the UK’s food issues.
But what a WWOOF exchange does offer, is something more human. The opportunity to learn alongside someone, take part in their daily life and really understand what caring for the land looks like, especially though different seasons.
A wonky carrot looks rather less disappointing once you understand the time and effort that was involved in growing it. That connection really matters.
The further most of us become from the source of our food, the easier it is to see farming and growing as something happening somewhere else. WWOOFing might just help bring people closer to the land and the practical knowledge behind what ends up on our plate.
This summer has shown that heat and drought are not a distant environmental problem. They are here, now, and they are a food problem and community problem.
We cannot control next summer’s weather but we can choose to value the people who grow our food more, try to strengthen the connections between growers and communities, and pay more attention to what the harvest is telling us.
One season ends, another begins.
* – Environment Agency: Dry weather and drought in England, 14–20 August 2026, 20 August 2026.
** – Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board: Harvest progress in the UK, updated 28 August 2026. Figures are based on data collected up to 24 August; AHDB’s final 2026 report is scheduled for 25 September.
*** – The Food Foundation: Farming for 5-A-Day—how resilient is the UK’s supply of fruit, vegetables and beans in a changing climate?, 19 August 2026.
**** – Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations: Food sovereignty definition.
***** – CSA Network UK: What is community-supported agriculture?.
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This thought piece was written by Luke Raistrick as a personal reflection on this summer. It is intended to open up conversation, rather than provide a fixed position, and the views expressed do not necessarily represent the official position of WWOOF.
